Smarter Power Plant Inspections with Drones

Investing in inspection drones improves worker safety, reduces inspection time and cost, and improves data quality, which helps managers make more informed decisions. These benefits are possible thanks to the reduction of human entry into dangerous, confined, or high-access areas and the reduction of scaffolding or rope-access.

Drones solve the costly and dangerous challenge of having to regularly inspect assets that are under constant stress, especially when these inspections must take place in confined and hard-to-reach areas. The drone acts as a reliable data-capturing tool, reducing the reliance on hazardous, slow, and expensive methods like scaffolding or rope-access.

Drones like the Elios 3 are inspection tools specifically designed to perform visual, thermal, NDT, and LiDAR inspections in confined and hard-to-reach areas. The drone can easily inspect confined areas like boilers and scrubbers thanks to its collision-tolerant cage and the LiDAR, which allows the drone to fly in GPS-denied areas.

Drones like the Elios 3 UT are the ideal data collection tool for power plants, as they can collect all the necessary data needed to plan appropriate maintenance. This includes high-quality visual and thermal data, ultrasonic thickness measurements, and digital twins.

Yes. The Elios 3 drone performs internal blade inspections to detect damage from lightning without putting people at risk. One application showed that Joseph from Pathfinder Optics was able to inspect all 3 blades within 2 hours, which is much faster than the 8 hours required with standard methods.

Yes. Drones can inspect hydropower penstocks for damage in the concrete or steel structure. Several companies have achieved cost reductions as high as 90% and efficiency improvements of 400% as a result of using the Elios 3 for penstock inspections.

Energy companies around the world are starting to create centralized drone programs where they manage several drone platforms and then deploy them to the plants that require urgent or periodic inspections.